An Update from the Keeper of Seasons

Every January the Rain trees lose their leaves completely. To reveal the exquisite shape of their branches, flowing like water into the sky. They have saved my life, many times. The Mahogany leaves fall and their winged seeds twirl down to form beautiful patterns on the ground. The fragrant Mango blossoms arrive, with promises of luscious fruit in March and April, the pride of our summers.

Every February the Hongai trees lose their leaves. And are quickly covered in the most beautiful fresh translucent oily leaves I have ever seen. Each small tree, a temple of shining light you must stop at because you cannot take your eyes away. I wait for this all year. In the meanwhile, the yellow Tabebuia Argentea starts bursting into bloom in our streets, slowly, little by little, until all the leaves fall and there is only a bright yellow tree left. And the Rain trees now cover themselves in lush thick canopies, getting ready for the summer. The delicate pink needle-like flowers start falling down and browning on their massive trunks and branches like soft down. 

Every March, as the temperature rises, the Hongai flowers form carpets of white and pink and purple on our streets. Early in the morning, when all is still, you can hear the Honge flowers falling, like the first drops of approaching rain. And the pink Tabebuia Rosea lines our streets, the flowers falling like snow and covering entire avenues, until the most hardened of hearts will catch their breath. Every year I stand at this particular line of tall trees on the main road, and cry. Like Sudama, returning from visiting Krishna and seeing his hut turned into a palace. 

Sometimes we ask nothing, and are given everything.

With every passing year there are more flowers in our city. Because more trees have now grown into maturity, and have started flowering. We sometimes fail to notice things that get better, because we are only tuned into Doom station. 

This year the rain tree leaf-falling was delayed, maybe because the rains lasted well into December. And the Tabebuia Rosea is early, and the Argentea slightly late. 

You take what you are given. With gratitude. In really dark times, the quiet abundance of trees can convince some to not leave. They save lives. By just being, doing their thing, resurrecting every year, coming back to life amidst so many odds. Sometimes they are all you have. But that in itself is so much. 

Albums

Rain Tree Raagaas

February, Seeds
Hongai
Hongai Flowers
February 
March

Light, Light

Sudama: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.com/2016/02/sudama.html

Fun and Learning with the Wise!

Do you have an elderly person in your family/neighbourhood who is extremely knowledgeable in any specific area, which could be of interest to others? For example, traditional Indian recipes, medicinal herbs, the history of a particular place, events from a particular era, or an interesting craft or skill that few people have. Or are they great story tellers, of old traditional Indian stories and folk tales that have not been documented?

Would they be happy to speak about it to a general audience, on a Zoom call? Can they speak reasonably well in English? If yes, would love to hear from you. 😃

What is this about?

 A bunch of us ex-colleagues got together virtually during the lockdown to do something around Mental Well-being in the Elderly.  

We are partnering with Silver Talkies to launch a series of sessions where elderly people will share knowledge in a live virtual session for the young and old alike, and interact with them. Our senior citizens have a wealth of knowledge! 

Being mentally engaged and feeling valued go a long way in keeping them happy and alert, and it delays cognitive decline. So this is a small attempt to help with that. 

We did 2 trial sessions with 2 friends' mothers speaking about traditional regional recipes, customized to their families' tastes. It was a great success! And both of them were super-excited though initially nervous. 😊 Their children/grandkids introduced them and made it feel like we are listening in on a family conversation - it was a beautiful experience!

So now we are trying to launch this with Silver Talkies providing the platform.

Guidelines

• The person should be able to speak reasonable English. Later on we would like to do this in vernacular languages too, but trying to get this off the ground for now, following Silver Talkies guidelines.
  
• Would need a family member/friend with them who can help them get on  to the Zoom call that Silver Talkies will set up, keep them company, ask questions, explain questions if needed etc. And if it is in the form of a conversation with the old person, they will also feel more comfortable. 
• It will be a 1-hour session. Open to anyone. You could forward the Zoom invite to all your family and friends. This is free of charge. 
  

Please let us know in the comments below if you know of someone. Or mail/message me or one of the people below if you know us personally. 

Thanks!

Asha. For the group (Adarsh, Lekha, Manoj, Prabha)

Who will you call today?

"When the lockdown started, all of us from the old college batch made a promise that we will dig up the phone numbers of our teachers from 20 years ago, make a list, and sign up to call and check on each one of them. They were incredibly moved. And so happy to hear from us. Some of them were in tears.

After that we now call up at least two people every week to check on them. People whom we haven't spoken to in years, old friends, distant relatives. Just call. Ask how they are. Connect. Spend at least 20 minutes on a conversation where you are really listening.

And every Saturday we have a quick catch-up with the college batch to share how moved we have been by these calls. How we received more than we gave. It has been life-changing. And it totally raises our spirits amidst all the gloom and disaster all around, the best distraction ever."

We heard this incredibly beautiful story because an old friend and I set up this Zoom call in our apartment complex, on Mental Well-being. She works for the Live Love Laugh Foundation, which is doing incredible service at a time when we are having a Mental Health crisis the world over. 

Of course it was uncomfortable. We don't speak about Mental Well-being in public in India, do we? 😊 But what do we have to lose? Covid has brought mental health to the forefront, ironically. The few people who dialed in completely agreed that we need to talk about this subject now. 

And what a hugely inspiring story we got as a reward! I have been trying to practice this myself. 

What does it entail?

1. Make a list of people you haven't spoken to in ages. Old friends, classmates, teachers, neighbours, acquaintances, distant family members, ex-colleagues. People whom you like or respect, but haven't connected to in ages because you have just been too busy with your own life.
2. Get their numbers if you don't have them.
3. Call at least 2 people from this list every week, when you and they are not in a hurry. Or just 1 if you can't make the time. 
4. Spend a good 20 minutes at least catching up. Listen. Ask the real questions. Get to know what they are going through. How they have also smiled and wept and walked through the fire while you were busy with your own journey. Share how you have done the same. Look beyond and really see the human being behind the words.

I won't spoil it for you by telling you how you will feel at the end. 

Discover it for yourself. 😃 And tell me about it. 

Background to this Post: Walking the Thin Line

Walking the Thin Line

Are you walking the Thin Line? Know someone who is? Don't know what to do? 

There is help all around. Reach out. Talk. It's not a Bad Life. It's a Bad Day. 

Deepika Padukone, a well-known Indian movie star, founded The Live Love Laugh Foundation after she came out about her battle with depression.

 https://thelivelovelaughfoundation.org/

The site is an excellent resource for those who are not sure where they are on the spectrum of mental well-being issues, whether it is time to seek help - and how. They also have programs for various groups, including children. One of our dear friends works there. 

India is seeing yet another amazing wave of positive social change amidst all the disaster, yet another testament  to our incredible adaptability and resilience. More and more people are speaking up about struggling with mental health issues. Seeking help is increasingly applauded as the right thing to do.  

Covid has finally brought in an increased acceptance that we are fallible, we have minds that need to be looked after as much as our bodies, and that the most resilient people are those who seek help.

Join the movement. Make 2020 the year you were an Agent of Social Change, part of the Big Wave that will go down in the history of this country. Tell me, you DO want some good memories of this year, don't you? 😊 

Speak

• Initiate conversations around mental well-being in your close circles - family, friends, office colleagues, apartment complexes, communities
• Of course it is uncomfortable. Change is difficult. Be a Warrior. "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"*
• You will be surprised what change you bring about, bit by bit. You never know. 
• The time is right. Strike.  

Share

• Share mental health resources widely across social media
• You never know which helpline will save someone's life

Seek

• If you ever find yourself walking the thin line, seek help. There is a life after this. Believe me.

Why am I sharing this? This is a campaign that came out of Saturday evening calls I set up with ex-colleagues from 15-20 years ago when the lockdown started in March 2020. We hope to contribute to the Mental Health Revolution in India, in our own small way. We believe that it's when everything comes crumbling down that we have to rise, be engaged, go beyond the preoccupations of our own personal lives. 

Has any other time ever proved to us as much that we are all in this together, we are intricately and irrevocably linked?

Please share. Somewhere someday it may reach someone who is walking the thin line with nothing to break the fall. 

*Mary Oliver, 'The Summer Day'

Foul!

My good friend Venkat doesn't get on Chat with me much these days. Wonder whether it has something to do with this conversation that happened more than a decade ago...😀

Discussion on Chat with Venkat. He wants to know about the films happening at the Indo-German film festival.

I tell him he missed the German movie called Wild Chicks at 3 PM.

I also tell him that some day I will make a movie called Wild Chicks. [Vild Chix, to prevent copyright problems]. It will be about this military coup in a poultry farm.

Since I need to somehow get people to watch/buy the film, I will have a few women in it. (this was pre-political correctness!)

But guess where they come in the movie, apart from all over the DVD cover and the posters? At the poultry farm the chickens watch this educational program called Reproduction in Humans. That's where these women come in.

But just when it gets interesting, Grandpa Chicken will come and switch off the TV.

Yes, I need to get an A certificate for the movie - otherwise no one will watch it. I'll get one - for the abusive language the chickens use when they fight!

At this point, I think Venkat is pulling his hair out. There is silence in the Chat window. He says he's going to watch F TV.

I say that there is an F TV in the poultry farm movie too - the chickens watch this channel called F TV - Fowl TV. Ooo ha ha ha ha!!

Though old-fashioned Grandpa Chicken calls it Foul TV.

I think it was at this point that Venkat abruptly closed the Chat window and went out for a drink.

Duck!

That was a warning. In case you didn't notice. 😛

Mr.Watter and his family lived with their best friend whose name was Duck. Duck's name was Duck because he was a duck. Duck lived in a small wooden house on stilts which Mr.Watter built for him near the porch.

Whoever made the word "weird" did so after meeting Duck. Every morning when one of the Watters opened the front door to collect the newspaper, Duck would be waiting on the small ledge under the porch roof with bated breath. Just as the person bent to pick up the newspaper, Duck would jump on his back cackling loudly in wicked glee. You could duck other ducks, but not Duck. He was as good as a heat-sensitive missile.

This drove Watter mad, but he didn't beat the life out of Duck or have him for dinner - he knew that in life, having to put up with some weirdness was a small price to pay for having loving, faithful, and forgiving friends.

So he came up with this solution. Whoever came to pick up the paper would wear a trekking jacket. So when Duck landed on them like God's wrath early in the morning, he would not get a grip and would slip off and land on the ground with a surprised cackle, and waddle away shaking his bottom furiously.

Now, Duck, either due to genetic unfairness in the department of Logical Deduction from Predictable Patterns, or having read just the first few chapters of too many philosophy books and therefore treated each new day as a fresh blank slate, unsullied by the experience of yesterday, went on jumping off the ledge on Watters' backs and falling off each time.

This went on so long that in the neighbourhood, when anyone wanted to say that something didn't affect him at all, he would say " It fell off me like Duck off a Watters' back!"

End of Story.😬

For life ought to be rich and abundant and full of love

Sonali and me and her folding chair at my Silk Cotton Tree

Twenty years ago, I used to be part of this group of strangers who used to meet up at an old house on Lavelle road in Bangalore on Sunday evenings, for "Culture Cafe" readings. The lovely Jyoti Makhija of the British Library set up this Yahoo group for people who loved to read. We met up on Sunday evenings and sat in a circle on the cool red oxide floor of this old empty house and read excerpts from books we loved. I met some very beautiful people there. Like Sonali. 

From whom I got a letter on Friday - ON PAPER - with big pictures of owls, in crayon. She lives a few kilometres away, but is reviving this old "art form", the written word on paper. It so happens that I get it the day before my birthday. What a lovely gift! 

And in the letter she mentions a particular passage I read in the group - 20 years ago! She said she could never forget the bread and the cheese, the thick chunks of it. 😃

Sonali, of the incredible strength, and the knowledge that Joy is something you got to create, like a home-cooked meal, not something you wait for to be delivered on a platter. 

It was easy to find that excerpt. This is where I got the name for my recipe blog - Abundance. It is the very first post on that blog. I had forgotten the details. But in a way this line was seared into my brain, and defined everything I believed life should be. 

I read this 1963 Norwegian novel just before I turned 20, those years of suffering when you are coming out of your cocoon and you are Neither Here nor There. 

I am not a foodie. If you ask me what I want to eat when we meet, I will probably say, "whatever". I don't really care. I care way more for Conversation and Connection. I will most probably not remember a single thing we ever ate together, unless of course you cooked it for me. But I will remember every single story you told me. And I believe in Generosity. And the Giving of Oneself without holding back. 

“…..For life ought to be rich and abundant and full of love."

Through all the years when life was neither rich nor abundant nor full of love, I still believed in this ideal vision. Just because I can't see the stars does not mean they don't exist. 

Nothing is ever promised. But "only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one" as Mary Oliver said? 

"A piece of bread and butter must overflow with joy and enthusiasm, with generosity and love."  

Ash Burlefoot, somewhere along the way, I have become you. 

Abundance: http://noodlesandmangopickle.blogspot.com/2009/08/abundance.html